Beck Diet Solution Day 2: Pick Two Reasonable Diets

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Today's task took a surprising amount of time, effort and thought. It's not so easy to truly and thoughtfully commit to a diet plan!

My written commitment card says, "I picked a primary and a backup diet plan that are
~ reasonable
~ nutritious and balanced
~ flexible
~ easy to use

My primary plan is a modified Spark diet. I will chose foods that fit within my calorie range and recommended proportions of carbohydrates, fats and protein according to my Spark nutrition tracker. I also need it to be easy to use so I spent some time roughing out portions. So for example, for lunch, is two cups of veggies, two portions of protein and one of fat. I can make the ingredients into a soup, a salad, a stir fry or (depending on the protein), a smoothie. I'll add grains to this meal when I'm finished with weight loss. Nutritional balance and flexibility.

My backup plan is the WeightWatchers PointsPlus plan that I used two years ago. That's even easier than my primary plan because you just count points... and can eat 15 pounds of fruit a day if you want to do so because veggies and fruits are "free". The WW plan has the advantage that you don't exactly need to give up overeating right away, just switch to overeating better quality food!

I wrote a couple more response cards as well. The book calls them "Sabotaging Thought" and "Helpful Response"; I'm calling them "Unskillful Thought" and "Skillful Thought".

Unskillful Thought: Commitment to a plan means I might be stuck with something horrible that I don't like at all and won't be sustainable for me.

Skillful Thought: I can commit to a primary plan for one week; I can do almost anything for one week and if I hate it at the end of the week, I can switch to my backup plan and find a new backup to replace it.

(This thought surprised me. And I thought fear of commitment was a male problem. Ha!)

Unskillful Thought: I'd rather skip breakfast and/or lunch and have a great big meal and snacks in the evening when I get bored, lonely and restless.

Skillful Thought: Skipping meals has always led to overeating, discouragement and abandoning my efforts. I can feel full with extra water if needed and I can meet my emotional needs with art projects. Some creative time for me will satisfy my real needs; food won't. I can never get enough of what I don't really want.

Unskillful Thought: I'll eat a healthy diet after I lose weight by extreme measures. (The book mentions this as a common self-defeating thought and embarrassingly enough, I recognized it in my own brain!)

Skillful thought: Learning how to eat and enjoy a healthy way of eating won't be any easier in the future and unhealthy dieting is likely to prevent me from reaching my goals, just like it has in the past.

SLENDERELLA61
Great choices! Thoughtfully done. Pat yourself on the back!! Every one of your skillful thoughts are right on. The ability to identify and label your unskillful (love the terminology) thoughts will take you far!!

One caution. My WW leader says that fruits and veggies are not "free" nor "unlimited", but they are zero pointsplus foods that we should eat TO SATISFACTION. I tend to overeat the freggies, and it doesn't do a lot of damage, but I feel far more in control when I eat everything sensibly.

SIMPLELIFE4REAL
Wow! I love your skillful thinking. Very cool. When I have to struggle with decisions or taking action on something, I think I might start asking my "Skillful Thinker" in me what to do. I believe we all have that side within us....it's a matter of how much we are willing to tap into it.1199 days ago